It's way past time to give a fellow vampire writer some love. Queen_Raiden is pretty active in the community and always has interesting things to say in the Vampires club. She also has a very interesting story here called Let's Go For A Pint. It is very different, very weird and very delightful. Give it a look.

A few winding highways away from the babelic bustle of central  Kruv City which is collectively on the brink of deciding whether to tear the sky open or not, cars slow down. The streets still occupy space in the same way, are paved in the same way and are used by the same economic cross-section of vehicles. But the atmosphere is different.

Towards Alnev and the the eastern side of the city, a new sort of life emerges. The Alnev Mixed- Model Academy is a squat, pink little building shaped like a hug. Two protruding arms to a horizontal line. A courtyard in the front. Gates. Barbed wires. The works.

At the end of every month, buses and cars stop around the vicinity of the hostels and dormitories that surround the school, teary eyed mothers and firm fathers sending boys and girls of all ages into the welcome embrace of the Mixed Academy. They are from all over the place. They arrive modestly and conservatively and they wait for their parents to hiss away in their creaking old cars before they take shelter beneath faithful old trees, smoking, kissing and exercising fledgling freedoms. They are like all kids.

There was always a subconscious drive for ghettoization by the collective of grown-ups around the area. It never worked. Kids didn't care anymore who was who. They all looked the same in their golden pseudo-hair and their leather jackets. Nobody cared if you were a Rahim or a Raymond. Nobody went to church or to the mosque.

It is a sun-dappled day, approximately a year after Safiya Abdur-Razzak had left the soils of Damya for Lebanon on Morocco or London on wherever. Tasha is doing Abdul Rahman's Advanced Trigonometry for him. He is daydreaming, as he always is.

The classroom is almost empty, save for a couple at the back who are unraveling their lives to each other when they aren't too busy exercising every inconspicuous method of contact at their disposal. The lights are dimmed to protect their privacy but Tasha doesn't mind. She prefers to work in the dark.

"What's the sine of 90 degrees?" she asks. She looks at Abdul Rahman, his curly hair cut far too short for her tastes. Not that that was her call anyway. He is looking out of the window, gently tapping at the glass with a coin.

"One. Why, you forgot?" he doesn't look away. He is so obvious sometimes. It infuriates Tasha to no end. She can see through the intellectual effete facade easily. She always could. He did not try very hard to hide his obsessions. That is what Tasha was interested in. Tasha is obsessed with the idea of being obsessed.

"No, I just wanted this whole thing to be worth something. Why'd you even take advanced trig if you don't like it?"

"I don't know. I thought I would." He turns and she knows he is smiling at her but she cannot see him but for his silhouette through the sunshine from behind him. "I thought I liked logic and things. I do. But just...well, it's all pretty useless, innit?"

She wonders where he got 'innit' from but decides not to prod. She can sense that he is about to unspool himself and she wants a peek. "What's useless about this? All the space telescopes and things like that. That's all trig."

"Yeah, there's a story there. They could teach us about space telescopes. But what's all this stuff about Maria's lighthouse and the three ships? Who's Maria? Who's in the ships?"

"It's..." the word is on the tip of her tongue.

"Hypothetical?" he asks.

"Yeah! Hypothetical."

"Well, hypothetical useless. There's no story there. There's a story in maths for sure, but nothing with Maria's lighthouse."

She sighs. She knows about his obsession with stories. His uninhibited interest in the whys. She has come across people like him before, of course. People who carry notebooks around and write poems and stories, usually not very good ones. But Abdul Rahman isn't interested in creation. He's all about discovery. That's his obsession.

"Yeah, I suppose you're right." She clicks her pen and returns to her trigonometry.

"You give up too easy."

She looks up. "What now?"

"You had something to say, Tasha. Say it." he sits, his head resting on the backrest of his chair.

She chews on the end of her pen. "Well, there's the whole maths as theory thing right? Like Miss Yavuz said. Maths as the purest science."

"Yeah, so?"

"So." she sits up and pushes her glasses up in front of her eyes again. "So, shouldn't it be okay if there isn't a story there? If it's just concepts? The whole hypothetical thing is just a fake story, right? So we can change it and make it no story and that would make it okay."

He nods.

"Yeah, it would be okay. But then-

"But then why, right?" she giggles and if the room were any brighter, she would see his cheeks redden.

He waits a full while before asking what she knows he will. "So did she email you?"

"One, her papa would email my papa. And two, no."

"Do you think she's still in Lebanon, then? Or do you think she got across?"

She waits a while before answering. Sometimes, it pays to do that when you're talking to Abdul Rahman. "I don't think about her at all. I try not to. You should too."

"But I'm not thinking about her."

She finishes the sum quickly and closes the book. "For the last bloody time, there was no secret paper. There were like a hundred stories about Uncle Razzak floating around when they left. That was just one of them."

"One of them is true, Tasha. And it could be be that one just as well as any of the others."

Tasha forces the workbook and pen into his hands. She has had this conversation with him far too many times and it is disconcerting now. She is tired of it and a little frightened. She has always been frightened of obsessions going rogue and turning against the obsessor.

They hear the gradual rumble of the bus entering the courtyard. The Athletic Team (and Cihangir(especially Cihangir)) are back. Tasha smiles and pulls his cheeks. "Just forget about it. Find another story,"

"You have to finish one before you move on to the next, right?"

She sighs again. "Right."

I hope the descriptions towards the beginning of each of these aren't too boring. Let me know of you think so. Please leave a comment letting me know if you enjoyed this. Vote if you like :) and also, add this story to your library if you'd like a little notification every time I update. Cheerio.